Fugue in A flat (2018)

Premiere

Program Notes

This is the fifth in a projected series of 12 Fugues that I plan to write over my life, roughly
one fugue every four years beginning in 2002. They are like entries in a stylistic journal,
snapshots of my musical preoccupations. By re-imagining the fugal form each time, I crystallise my
musical thinking down to its most technical, leaving poeticism to one side and allowing myself to
abstract. Writing these pieces allows me to focus on pure form, within a broad conception of what a
‘fugue’ might be.

This particular fugue is slow, and unfolds within the most basic idea of the Baroque fugal form.
A subject is presented, followed by a contrasting countersubject; two episodes expand and develop
ideas lurking within the subject/countersubject pair; a stretto section layers subject statements;
a coda brings the piece to an end. All the sections are distilled to their minimum length, and
there are only two ‘voices’.